still burned in the back of your mind
by thecivilunrest
Summary: She can't forget the mistake that she made not so long ago. Dominique/Lysander


**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Harry Potter. _Shocking or what? (Also, don't own the title, thank the lovely Taylor Swift for that one, and for giving me the idea for this story.)

**A/N: **WHY ARE THERE NOT MORE STORIES WRITTEN ABOUT THESE TWO? Seriously, it's an injustice to the _Harry Potter _fandom. Reviews are appreciated, and so is more writing of this epic pairing! (I recommend Childish_Fairy over on HPFF if you want some really good stuff. Her Dom and Lysander is frickin' amazing!)

_Still Burned in the Back of Your Mind_

_::_

"That's not a good enough reason."

"If it's good enough for me it should be good enough for you."

"Bullshit! This isn't what this is about. You're just scared, scared that I'm going to leave you bleeding just like those other guys. Well guess what, I'm not like those other guys. I never have been."

"I'm sorry. Good-bye."

"Just remember that this is your fault, Dom, not mine."

_::_

I should go over to him and say something. I really should. But I probably won't.

It's not that I don't have anything to say to him, in fact, I have plenty to say to him. I really, really do. It's just that I don't _want _to talk to him.

It'd be easier, if _he_ had been the one to break _my _heart. Then I would have been able to play the part of the 'Poor Wounded Love Spurned Bitch'. Instead I have to go play the part of 'The One That Fucked Up'. Lovely.

I smile at the boy that comes up and drops my butterbeer on my table, and I watch as he blushes and stammers at me, unable to control himself. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smirking. Males, they're just too easy. Put someone with a pretty face and some excess fat on those places that are oh so important and BADDA BING BADDA BOOM! it's like magic how fast they can get stupid.

He was never stupid. _Lysander _was never stupid. He never looked at my boobs before my face, never said crude comments while I was walking down the hallway back at Hogwarts. He was always perfectly polite (Sometimes _too _polite, I mean, how many times can a girl hint that she wants you to kiss her before throwing herself at you?) and he acted like a gentleman.

That was the thing that really got me about him. It's amazing what Veela blood can do to a person's manners, but he never let my looks get in the way of anything. He never got jealous, he never tried to stop me from talking to other guys. In spite of my looks I'm not Helen of Troy, I wasn't going to go behind his back. He trusted me.

He liked the person behind the face (the real me, the one with the fierce Bat Bogey Hex, courtesy of Aunt Ginny and sharp tongue that never lets down) , which is something so rare now in the sort of days when so rarely anyone bothers to look behind the mask which sometimes can cover up the monster that lies waiting beneath.

But I fucked it all up. Just like I do everything else.

So what if I had been screwed over by boys one too many times? I knew that Lysander loved me, and that I loved him back. But it scared the shit out of me, and I couldn't take it. Coward that I am (there's a reason that the Sorting Hat, that loveable singing rag, put me in Ravenclaw instead of Gryffindor like a good little Weasley) I had to run far away from him, as far as I could get.

I couldn't handle it. People that don't know what it's like to be afraid, truly afraid that their heart was going to be stomped and crushed and spit on again, they would look at me and tell me that I was an idiot and keep on walking. What is worth running away from something as good as love?

Let me just say this. It's the fact that maybe, just maybe, I know what true pain feels like and you don't want to have to go back to the white burning agony that bleeds out of you slowly until you're dry and numb and you can't feel anything any more.

Yeah. I bet that explanation would make most people's head spin in confusion. It's honestly not as hard as it seems, really.

A body - a heart = PAIN. Most of the time. After all, does anyone _really _want to know what it feels like to get your heart ripped out of your chest?

Didn't think so.

I twirl the empty bottle in my hands and try to decide whether or not I should go over there and say something before he leaves. I know he saw me seeing him. As soon as I walked into the Leaky Cauldron I had seen him and we had looked at each other, stunned, before retreating back into our own separate corners.

But now it was time for me to grow some balls and face him. I know better than to expect him to come to me. With a sigh I got up from my brooding and walked over to his table. It was two in the afternoon, but he was just getting finished eating.

"Hello, Lysander," I said, and I watched as his eyes looked up to my face, startled. It was clear that he hadn't expected me to come over here and talk to him. I hadn't expected me to come over here either, to be quite honest.

"Dominique," he nods, and I winced when I heard that. He never used my full name, not ever. I was always Dom to him. Always. But I guess now that we're not best friends anymore all of that's gone down the drain.

"How are you?" I asked, and winced internally. Who would have ever known that Lysander and I would have been reduced to small talk? Once upon a time we had been best friends that _always _had something to say to each other, even if there was no reason to bring it up.

It's amazing, really, what one mistake can do to people. I know that I wish that I could go back in time and _not _break up with him. I know that now, and I know that freedom, which is what I told him I wanted to break up for, isn't anything except missing him and wanting to go back to that frightful day.

"I'm fine," he said back, and his eye twitched, which let me know that this was bothering him just as much as this was bothering me.

"That's good. And Lorcan?" Bring up the twin brother when you don't have anything else to say. At least I know that he'll have to answer me. Unless, of course, he's dead. Or something. I don't really know, I didn't much talk to Lorcan Scamander, not because I didn't want to, but because more often than not he was in his own little world, much like his mother Luna.

Thank goodness Lysander shares almost no similarities with his mother except for his misty eyes.

"Lorcan's fine. He and Lucy are doing well. He's planning to propose to her, I think," he told me, casually falling into conversation until he realized that he was talking to _me_, Lucy's _cousin _and the enemy. His face falls back into the lines that I knew so well, the ones that practically scream _I don't trust you_. "But yeah, he's good. How's Victorie?"

"She's pregnant. Up puking at all hours of the night, whoever called it morning sickness got it's name all wrong, but she's still chugging along cheerfully. She says that it's going to be a girl, but I'm not so sure."

"And Louis?" he prompts.

"He's still being a prick," I answer, and I see a glint light up in Lysander's eye. Even though he's always telling me to be nice to Louis because he's my brother, after all, Lysander doesn't like him much more than I do. Not that I blame him; my brother's the biggest jerk to walk the planet since probably Voldemort himself.

We're all out of siblings now and I don't want to keep talking about family. It's stupid and uninteresting and honestly, I don't want to know what his father and his mother are up to. Probably chasing the next biggest invisible thing that doesn't exist.

"That sounds about like him." I grin, and for a moment Lysander grins back. It's easy, far too easy, to fall back into the easy familiarity that we've always shared. For a minute we're silent and I let myself remember the quiet times with the most intriguing boy that I have ever known.

"Look, Lysander," I sigh and he looks up at me expectantly. I certainly sound like I've got something to say at any rate. "I'm sorry for everything, really. You were the most important person to me, even, and I kind of screwed everything up. Sorry." Hear that choking noise? Yeah, that's my pride. I think that when I started swallowing it the stupid thing got stuck.

Lysander looked up at me, and unfathomable expression in his big grey eyes and I wonder that if I made a mistake coming over here. Probably. That's my life really, starting with the fact that it was a mistake that I was born. Dad wanted a boy, Maman hadn't wanted another child period (she still loved me, of course, she wasn't cruel, but I had heard her saying that once when I was nine and it's stuck with me).

One after an other, starting with my birth, my life has been a domino effect of mistakes. Getting born, not being the perfect child, getting into the wrong house at Hogwarts, always falling for the wrong boy, breaking up with the _right _boy, not getting the correct job at the Ministry... The list can go on and on.

But Lysander, even though he was right there with me through all of my many mistakes never had too much bad to say about them. He always stuck with me, even when I didn't deserve it. Even if he didn't agree with everything that I did he was always there. That's more than I can say for most people.

"Dom," he starts, and for a minute my heart almost lifts up when I hear him call me by the nickname that only he has ever used. "Let me put it this way, you hurt me. Badly."

"I know," I say truthfully. Honestly, I know that. And doesn't he think that maybe, just maybe, I've hurt myself too? That I wish that I didn't think about getting a time turner from the Department of Mysteries and going back to that day last June and grabbing myself just before I break up with him and shaking me, telling me not to do it? That I don't know that breaking his heart was one of the worst things that I've ever done to myself, ever?

It's not true, not at all.

"Let me finish," he tells me, and I shut my mouth. I've always had a habit of saying things without letting people fully explain themselves. One of my _bad_ habits, truth be told. "I loved you, and you left me out to dry. You know what it feels like, don't you?" I do, and he knows it. He was always the one who found me when I cried. I nod, and he continues. "And that's not okay, at all. But I still care about you, no matter how hard I tried to stop."

"I'm sorry," I say in a small voice, and he nods.

"I know, I am too. But Dom, I think I want to give this thing, to give _us_, one last shot. Just don't break my heart again."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

I smile and watch as he smiles back at me, just a little bit. We're not Dominique&Lysander again, not even close, but at least it's a shot.


End file.
